Iranian opposition leader's son given jail sentence

Mohammad Hossein Karroubi, the son of Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi, has been sentenced to six months in jail for speaking with foreign media about the alleged torture and death of prisoners in the Kahrizak detention centre in 2009.

Mohammad Hossein Karroubi with his father Mehdi Karroubi

On his Facebook page, Mohammad Hossein Karroubi reports that he was sentenced in connection with his media statements about Kahrizak, adding that the case against him was launched by Saeed Mortazavi, the Tehran prosecutor at the time. Mortazavi is currently under suspicion for involvement in the crimes committed at Kahrizak.

Mohammad Hossein Karroubi writes: "After my father's letter to Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani about the Kahrizak crimes was published in the Etemad Melli daily in 2009, Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's Prosecutor at the time and the chief suspect in the Kahrizak case, made my interviews with foreign media into a charge against me, filing a case against me in the Revolutionary court and using everything in his power to land me in jail."

Opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi has been under house arrest since February 2011. In August of 2009, he wrote a letter to Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the head of Iran's Expediency Council, urging him to initiate a probe into allegations of sexual abuse of detainees in detention centres and prisons.

The letter followed the widespread crackdown on election protesters, many of whom were arrested. Some of these detainees took their reports of mistreatment by prison authorities to the office of Mehdi Karroubi, who had challenged the veracity of the election outcome.

The testimonies of these individuals were gathered along with other documents and delivered to judicial authorities for investigation. While the investigation was whitewashed, Karroubi's offices were raided and shut down, and all its contents were confiscated.

Mehdi Karroubi' s children are rarely allowed to visit their father. He and the other election challengers, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard, are under house arrest and cut off from the public, although no official charges have been brought against them.